Reports
-
Venice 2018 midway round-up: a quadruple whammy
New films from Yorgos Lanthimos, Alfonso Cuarón, Jacques Audiard and László Nemes are the highlights so far at a sterling – if very masculine – Venice Film Festival, reports Nick James.
Tuesday 4 September 2018 -
Venice Film Festival awards 2018: read our reviews of the winning films
Alfonso Cuáron won the Golden Lion for his beautifully distilled Roma, with the runner’s up prize going to Jennifer Kent’s colonial horror The Nightingale, and westerns from Jacques Audiard and the Coen brothers also amongst the winners.
-
Virtual voyages at Venice Film Festival 2018
A well-curated selection of immersive adventures at this year’s festival showed how far the technology and the talent has come, but also how different these experiences are from cinema, writes Paul O’Callaghan.
Thursday 20 September 2018
Reviews
-
Kado (A Gift) and the short-film highlights of the 2018 Venice Film Festival
Aditya Ahmad’s prize-winner is an intriguing and refreshingly joyful exploration of gender identity – and not the only great find at the 2018 festival, writes Laurence Boyce.
Thursday 20 September 2018 -
The Nightingale first look: a bloody song of freedom from Australia’s colonial violators
Jennifer Kent’s furious follow-up to The Babadook lays bare her country’s original sins, with an Irish convict settler and Tasmanian guide finding common cause in flight from their monstrous British oppressors, writes Paul O’Callaghan.
Monday 10 September 2018 -
Vox Lux first look: a roiling satire of post-traumatic popsploitation
Raffey Cassidy and Natalie Portman play a mass-shooting survivor turned pop puppet coming apart at the seams in Brady Corbet’s turbo-burlesque, in which fame is just another form of assault, writes Paul O’Callaghan.
Friday 7 September 2018 -
22 July first look: is Paul Greengrass’s Utøya docudrama a pyrrhic re-enactment?
Paul Greengrass’s dramatisation in the round of Anders Behring Breivik’s 2011 killing spree is deftly impactful, but leaves Nick James with qualms about its moral value.
Friday 7 September 2018 -
Our Time first look: Carlos Reygadas gores masculinity on its own horns
Carlos Reygadas lays bare masculine pathology with a typically bravura and extraordinarily unsparing dissection of love and marriage, casting himself and his spouse Natalia López at the heart of the piece, writes Giovanni Marchini Camia.
Thursday 6 September 2018 -
El Pepe, a Supreme Life first look: Emir Kusturica reveals a president in repose
José Mujica was no ordinary politician, and Emir Kusturica’s portrait of the retured former Uruguayan president is an impressively intimate study of a great man, writes Elisabet Cabeza.
Thursday 6 September 2018 -
American Dharma first look: Errol Morris gives Steve Bannon the whip hand
Errol Morris concedes the ring leader of the alt.right a softly satirical showcase that’s unlikely to change any minds, says Jonathan Romney.
Thursday 6 September 2018 -
The Sisters Brothers first look: Jacques Audiard takes a delightful detour from the western trail
Jacques Audiard’s take on the deathless genre is a mournfully comic yarn that builds at its own loose pace to a surprisingly profound conclusion, writes Jessica Kiang.
Tuesday 4 September 2018 -
Sunset first look: a belle epoque a hatstand of a movie
László Nemes’s overblown melodrama tracks Juli Jakab’s would-be hatter through a lavishly recreated late-imperial Budapest, a florid procession of headwear and a madly unfocussed plot, writes Jessica Kiang.
Tuesday 4 September 2018 -
A Star Is Born first look: Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga revive a Hollywood tale for the YouTube age
Bradley Cooper’s accomplished debut stars Lady Gaga as an aspiring singer looking for a break, while the director plays the sozzled rocker who gives her a hand up, writes Paul O’Callaghan.
Tuesday 4 September 2018 -
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs first look: a six-pack of western rambles by way of the Coen brothers
Joel and Ethan Coen explore how the west was spun in an eclectic portmanteau that covers the American cinema’s foundational genre territory with gimlet-eyed glee, says Michael Leader.
Monday 3 September 2018 -
Non-Fiction first look: Juliette Binoche and Guillaume Canet talk out publishing’s digital takeover
Set in the analogue milieu of a digitally discombobulated Parisian media couple, Olivier Assayas’s latest pulse-of-the-times drama falls back to old-school 16mm and a lot of old-hat debates over the page versus the pixel, writes Giovanni Marchini Camia.
Monday 3 September 2018 -
The Favourite first look: Yorgos Lanthimos courts controversy but cops out
Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone play pointless power games in Yorgos Lanthimos’s baroque and profane regal romp that runs out of steam far too soon, writes Giovanni Marchini Camia.
Friday 31 August 2018 -
Roma first look: the film of Alfonso Cuarón’s career
A turbulent year in Mexico City is seen through the eyes of a young woman and the family she works for, in this very personal film that reframes the director’s own childhood memories, writes Beth Webb.
Friday 31 August 2018 -
First Man first look: an elegant, intimate epic about the Moon landing
Ryan Gosling delivers the most mature performance of his career as Neil Armstrong in Damien Chazelle’s fourth feature, a film that manages to make the iconic Moon landing story feel fresh again, writes John Bleasdale.
Wednesday 29 August 2018
Further reading
-
The Digital Edition and Archive quick link
Log in here to your digital edition and archive subscription, take a look at the packages on offer and buy a subscription.